It begins with the first person with
whom Louis makes eye contact once he's off the boat. That's how his
drum hunts always work. In this case, it's a customs official on the
blacktop just off the gangway at the port of Guayaquil, Ecuador. And
the official—a middle-aged man with owlish glasses and a chartreuse
safety vest—is already on the task, talking on his cell phone, his
tone all business.

He snaps his phone shuts and turns to
Louis. "The best place to find a drum is the Mercado
Artesanal, in the middle of town. You can take a taxi there."

* * *

We need more information, so we ask
another local standing nearby, one of the tour guides herding our
fellow passengers into a white minibus. She says the same thing:
Mercado Artesanal.

"I like to triangulate," says
Louis. Verifying the leads will keep us on track--we'll only be in
town for a few hours, so we need accurate information. A third local at the pier says the same, so that settles it.

* * *

There are five of us along for the drum
hunt; Louis Patler is our fearless leader. In his outfit of green
t-shirt, khaki shorts, and running shoes, he doesn't look exactly
conform to the fedora-and-machete stereotype of South American
artifact hunters, although his attire is much far better suited for
our specific type of fast-paced urban exploration. Louis is a social
anthropologist and one of the speakers on the ship; his topics
include "The Future of the Future" and—not really related
to the rest of his lecturers--"Drum Hunting," a lecture he
gave just a couple of days ago, while we were transiting the Panama
Canal.

Louis's drum hunts are his introduction
to a culture. Every culture has drums of some sort, he points out in
the lecture, and each place typically has its own unique and
traditional type. He has several drums on stage, all of which he's
purchased on this very trip. He picks up a handsome, handmade wooden
conga from Montego Bay, Jamaica, which he bought from a Rastafarian
master drum-maker. It had been the guy's personal drum for years—the
drum-hunting party had ended up at his house—and though Louis had
admired the craftsmanship, he assured the charismatic drum-maker
that, truly, he didn't need to buy it and take away this beautiful
instrument that clearly had so much personal meaning. But the guy
said, no, something told him it was time for a new owner. Louis
should have the drum. Play it, cherish it.

Louis has acquired dozens of drums over
the course of his travels all over the world. But even though he
loves drums, the real point of the hunt is not really to acquire an
instrument but to see a new culture. It's an ice-breaker with
strangers, it's the quest that serves as the framework for
exploration, it's a way to see everyday life and meet people with
similar interests. He puts the question to the audience: What's
your quest? What do you want to find in each new culture?

After the talk, I rush over to the
lectern, all but elbowing people out of the way. I'd love to join him
sometime, I tell him, trying hard to stay cool and suppress the
eager, desperate, borderline petulant voice inside me: PLLEEEEEASE!
TAKE ME WITH YOU THAT SOUNDS AWESOME LET'S GO RIGHT NOW.

* * *

There are no vans available for hire at
the port of Guayaquil, evidently, only cars roughly the size of
toasters. There are five passengers from the ship: Louis, me, Bill,
Judith, and Suzanne. Not one of us is willing to miss this
opportunity, so we cram into a tiny but well-kept sedan—Bill,
Suzanne, and me in the back, Louis and Judity contorted precariously
into the front as our driver, Christián, heads toward the market
(which he, too, thinks is our best bet).

As we enter the market--a vast, modern warehouse space with warrens of shops selling clothing, bags,
trinkets, and other merchandise--Louis instructs us in the fine art
of seeking out the particular types of drums he wants, the older,
more traditional ones. "I've learned to enter a shop and never
look straight ahead," he says. Most people want the
shinier, newer drums, so that's what the shopkeepers display most
prominently. "I always look down low or up high."

Now, if the words "Artisan Market"
conjure images of, say, a woodworker hunched over a table, knife in
one hand, intricately-carved piece of mahogany in the other, a
pile of shavings growing below; or a weaver working at a loom, a
brightly-colored blanket taking shape slowly but surely--well, if
that's what you're thinking, you should probably give the Artisan
Market in Guayaquil a pass. They have mass-made sweaters with
ostensibly traditional patterns; they have mass-made maracas painted
with the word "ECUADOR"; they have mass-made drums that are
roughly the same general design as traditional drums, except they're
much smaller and have your choice of such traditional motifs as
Knockoff Sponge Bob or Bloblike Purple Thing With Teeth And A
Tale--Oh, I Guess That's Possibly Barney.

There are bigger and better and less
Barney-adorned drums, too, but they're all new.

Christián is working the phone, calling
everyone he knows who might have drum tips. And over and over, I see
his face start to light up before he says, with a frustrated chuckle, “No, no! Estos son nuevos--el no los quiere. Solo viejo. Viejo, viejo!” Those are new. This guy wants old.

* * *

On our second pass down one aisle of
the market, we strike up conversation with a shopkeeper named Carlos.
He looks a little bit like Mandy Patankin (Inigo Montoya) in “A
Princess Bride.” Again, the same result: nuevo, sí; viejo, no.
But Carlos is intrigued by these odd, inquisitive tourists, and he
and Louis strike up a conversation, with Christián translating. Soon,
Carlos is on his phone. He has a friend who he knows will
have a drum. And the friend does. He's on the other side of the
country, but he can get the drum to us next week.

There's a
collective groan. We don't have a week. We only have a few hours.
Christián shakes his head, laughing again. He's a professional but
incredibly low-key guy, early thirties, wearing the
professional-but-low-key guy's uniform of short-sleeved checked shirt
and jeans. He's also clearly very amused by his atypical tourist
charges. By this time, we've talked to nine different people, either
in person or on the phone. Louis's record on one drum-hunt is
twenty-one people before getting a drum; the minimum was two.

We
linger in Carlos's shop, and after a time, he pulls out a small
guitar from behind the counter and starts strumming it. He offers to
sell it, and it seems like a joke, but Louis says, well, okay. It's a
nice little instrument—and, hey, it's better than leaving
empty-handed. Louis insists that Carlos play one last song on the
guitar, a sort of blessing before it's passed on to the new owner, as
the music fills this otherwise quiet corner of the Mercado Artesenal
and we all grin goofily, a sense of collective accomplishment and
kinship.

* * *

Christián is still
working his phone, and as we leave the market, he has a new
destination in mind. He's heard there's a musical instrument store
not far from here.

The Ecko Music Store. You have to check all bags at the
front so, sadly, I have no photos of the scenes inside.

As it turns out, the Ecko Music store
in central Guayaquil isn't that hard to find. It's a big store, two
stories, both lined with broad windows showing off the wares to
passersby: guitars, drums, keyboards, amps. There's also a giant
disco ball that marks the corner entrance. It's probably four feet in
diameter, big enough to serve as an exercise ball for, say, a
Shih-Tzu, with several much smaller disco balls orbiting along the
equator. The whole disco solar system is suspended from the broad
overhang of a roof that caps the two-story building.

On the second floor, a twentysomething
salesman wearing a hot-pink polo shirt--his store uniform--is showing
off keyboards to a father and his young teenage son, a budding rock
star in tight red pants, a black t-shirt, and canvas shoes. The kid
is wearing playing Pachelbel's "Canon" (of course) and messing with the
various buttons and knobs above the keys, testing out the effects and
loops. The salesman pushes one button and suddenly the song sounds
like a trumpet with a drum-and-bass beat, but the kid scowls and
shakes his head, reverting back to the piano. As Louis investigates drums, Christián makes a slow, shy, self-conscious lap through the keyboard section, cautiously looking at each one and its price tag; the cheapest one is $1,060. His daughter plays the piano, he says.

Louis finds a traditional drum,
well-made … and brand spanking new. But he decides that's all
right. It's well-constructed, gives a great tone. He tells the
salesman he'll take it.

Downstairs, as we head toward the exit,
drum in hand, we stop for a moment to observe another scene
unfolding. A group of nuns in flowing white habits is
chatting intently with one of this slick young salesman, all of them
carefully examining a sound mixing board. We watch the nuns gesture,
explaining their sound-mixing needs, and then we head back to the
street, drum in hand.

My first book was Europe on Five Wrong Turns a Day(Perigee Books/Penguin, 2012), a travel memoir about my attempt to tour Europe guided only by a 1963 copy of the guidebook Europe on Five Dollars a Day. This blog has its roots in that trip, and if you dig back to the 2009 archives, you'll find my posts from the road.

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